SLAVE LABOR IN MODERN AMERICA?

Prisoners As Slaves...the Loophole

The grizzled models in the advertisements for Prison Blues jeans will never be mistaken for Kate Moss or even Marky Mark. That's because they come from the same place as the jeans: the Oregon state prison in Pendleton. Prison Blues has built a media buzz and annual sales approaching $2 million, deep-sixing the idea that prisoners merely make license plates. Yet designer jeans account for only a tiny fraction of the massive economy running off the country's captive labor market. In 1994, such enterprises employed 70,621 inmates, generating a hefty $1.3 billion in sales. "We've had great results," says Steve Dahle, who employs convicts to make stained glass at the Art Glass Center in Las Vegas. "When I bring out a window, they just attack it. They're incredibly focused." And the workforce is getting bigger all the time -- the prison population has more than TRIPLED since 1980. Twenty-one states require inmates to work.

At a time when factory workers are losing their jobs to cheap labor overseas, the behind bars industry has its share of detractors. "What kind of message are we sending-- that you have to go to prison to get a job?" says Rudy Oswald of the AFL-CIO. UNICOR, the Federal Bureau of Prisons division that runs manufacturing operations, can only make its goods for governmental use, but products made in state prisons can be sold to the public, provided, among other things, that the convicts make the minimum wage and have their Social Security taxes paid.

Despite opposition from many prison-reform advocates, this invisible economy is expanding, making inroads into the service sector as well. In California, prisoners even take reservations over the phone for TWA.

Source: Marc Spiegler, George magazine, 3/26/96
WFI EDITOR: It is fitting that this news comes from a magazine named after the Father of the Country, George Washington, who owned 390 human slaves. In Nazi Germany, when the inmates went through the gates of a pre-eminent concentration camp, above the gate the motto WORK MAKES FREE was written in German. Today, over 1 million Americans are in prisons and jail throughout America, and one of the highest volumes of "crime" in every state are violations of the VEHICLE CODE.

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